Quick Links: American Painting & Chinese Architecture

It’s that time again. The open tabs have piled up, and it’s time to share some links while trying to not go overboard with lengthy comments.

*First today is Chinese Vernacular Architecture, a blog by UCSB Art History PhD student Wencheng Yan. He hasn’t updated in quite some time, but among his posts from a few years ago are some excellent ones about the Yuan Palace and efforts to save Suzhou’s vernacular architecture, among other topics.

*Meanwhile, in a piece cleverly titled “>Curator, Tear Down These Walls,” the New York Times’ Roberta Smith has presented an argument for American folk art to be considered right up there with academic art. The power of the canon can be very strong, and even today, even as we question ‘what is art?’ in our classrooms and galleries, even as we work to challenge the canon, we are still somewhat arbitrarily implicitly, or explicitly, elevating some types of art above others. I don’t know much about the intricacies of the politics of American art appreciation, but it reminds me of the way that late Ming Dynasty painter & art critic Dong Qichang, through his incredible influence, was able to shape Chinese tastes all the way down to the present, to appreciate literati art the most, and to disparage academic art. Only very recently have art historians and curators come back around to begin to examine Chinese academic art, and to regard it highly, once again.

*Archaeologists in Tokyo have reported the first-ever discovery of Jômon period human remains in the Kantô plain, outside of shell-mounds. I recently learned that the soil in most parts of Japan is rather acidic, and breaks down human remains – even bones – within just a few hundred years, making it especially rare to find remains outside of what are called “pot burials”, where the bones are placed within ceramic vessels. Actually, now that I think about it, if the soil is acidic enough to break down bones, why doesn’t it break down shell mounds?

And.. that’s all for now. More stuff to come.

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Quick Links: Japanese History, and Museums

Just a couple links, today, on topics related to early modern Japan, and two related to museum matters.

*First, a recent issue of the scholarly journal City, Culture, and Society, focusing chiefly on early modern Japanese cities, especially Osaka. All thirteen articles are freely downloadable (no login or university affiliation necessary).

Article subjects include “Urban social policymaking in modern Osaka,” “Poverty, disease, and urban governance in late 19th century Osaka,” “The traditional city of Osaka and performers,” and articles on carpenters, construction workers, and stevedores (dockhands) in early modern Osaka, among others.

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*Next, a full-hour video of a talk given by Constantine Vaporis back in 2008, entitled “Samurai in Edo and the Culture of Early Modern Japan.” The talk focuses on the lifestyle of samurai retainers in Edo during their stay there on sankin kôtai (alternate attendance), a major element of the content of Vaporis’ book Tour of Duty, which would be published the following year. This is easily one of my favorite books on Japanese history, in its detailed “facts on the ground”-oriented approach, helping us envision life in that time and place, rather than subordinating the historical evidence to the advancement of abstract theoretical arguments.

This video is a great taste of what you’ll find in the book.

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*In our third link today, Metropolitan Museum Director Thomas Campbell presents at TED.

He speaks on a variety of subjects, mostly on the value and importance of museums – of seeing actual objects rather than just digital images on the Internet, accessible as those may be – and addresses, in part, the value of museums in bringing the cultures of the world to the museumgoer. The Islamic galleries at the Met have just reopened after being closed for renovations for many years, and present a view of the Arab world quite different from that we see in the news. They play an important part in helping us understand our world – and specifically, that part of the world – more fully. And, at a time when Turkey, among other countries, are trying to reclaim anything and everything excavated from their lands, these exhibits serve an important purpose in inspiring people to be interested in Turkish history and culture, to visit Turkey, and perhaps even to think positively of Turkey, its people, and its culture. As Campbell says:

“We are in the business of celebrating Turkish culture. It is the great displays in London, Paris and New York, more than anything else, that will encourage people to go to Turkey and explore their cultural heritage, and not just the sun and beach.”

Japan understands all too well the importance of soft power – the effect that art & culture can have on creating a positive, friendly attitude among people around the world. It is a shame that Turkey does not seem to feel the same way.

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*Finally, an article in the New York Post discussing Nazi provenance issues, and alleging that many top New York museums have resisted claims that objects in their collections were acquired after being stolen from their proper owners by the Nazis.

These issues can be quite complex, especially these days so long after the Nazi era, when former owners have passed away and inheritors are now making claims, and when, in at least some cases, the paper trail may be incomplete, leading to inconclusive evidence as to whether or not a work was obtained ethically.

I was not surprised to read in this article that many museums take this issue seriously and are working on doing the necessary research, but that it’s difficult and takes a long time and that they only have one or two part-time staff able to devote time to doing the work. I was surprised, however, at this statement from MoMA: “The museum maintains the work wasn’t considered stolen because the German museums were state institutions ‘and the art in them was owned by the German government.’” I should sincerely hope there is more to the story than what this NY Post article implies, because, seriously, shame on you, MoMA, if that’s your genuine stance.

My thanks to my father for alerting me to the existence of this news article. Thanks, Dad!

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Quick Links – Mary Louise Pratt Edition

It’s time for another Quick Links. Well, sort of. Even in my efforts to keep the description/commentary on each link short, the total blog post still comes up quite long. So, I’ll focus on just two links today, and save the rest for another day.

Classes have started here at my new school, and boy have we hit the ground running. I’m quite accustomed, by now, to having to read upwards of 100 pages (i.e. for example, three journal articles of roughly 30-something pages each) each week, but never before have I been asked to read entire books in such a short period of time. Still, despite my incredible stress over it initially, I’ve found myself having finished all my assigned reading (and then some) for this coming week, just in time to get started on the next set of books.

One book we have been assigned this term is Mary Louise Pratt’s 1992 volume ”Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation”. I won’t get into discussing that book too much here, but, it either cites or coins a good number of terms which have (apparently?) rather entered the jargon of post-colonial discourse, and yet which I have myself never heard of. Transculturation, as seen in the title, is one. Anti-conquest is another. Seeking to figure out what “anti-conquest” is supposed to mean, and finding Pratt’s own explanations woefully unclear, I did what any kid of the Internet age would do – I googled it. And found, quite high up on the list, the first Link I’d like to share with you today.

*I do not know if RDK Herman’s 2009 article “The Aloha State: place names and the anti-conquest of Hawaiʻi” uses the term “anti-conquest” in the same way Pratt intends it, but the meaning of the term in Herman’s usage is much clearer. In this essay, Herman describes efforts in Hawaiʻi to change placenames (especially street names) from names with Anglo origins to names deriving from the Hawaiian language (if not necessarily from the actual Hawaiian name for that place). The article touches upon fascinating concepts about the colonized or decolonized nature of a space, and the powerful role of naming within those processes or discourses. In his usage, the concept of “anti-conquest” comes into play where actions are taken that seem on the surface to be recognizing, acknowledging, honoring the native people and restoring the usage of their language, their culture, into the space, while not truly granting those native people any true power or agency. The Hawaiian street names are assigned by the State or city government, i.e. the colonizing power, which in doing so speaks for the Hawaiians, or makes them seem to be speaking, without actually granting them voice. And, of course, the Hawaiians are not actually given back control of their land, or increased actual political power, but merely this show of Hawaiʻi being made to look and feel a little more Hawaiian.

Herman points out, though, that “anti-conquest is never a conscious process. Colonizers usually perceive it as paying genuine respect to the local culture” (p78), the implication being that they do not realize or recognize the power politics at play, in which the very fact that they are the ones doing these things, rather than the colonized doing it for themselves, marks them as still very much being the ones in power, i.e. still the colonial power, and as not actually giving up any power or agency to the colonized. Theory is not my strong point, and you can take this or leave it as you will – or, feel free to correct me, explaining out either the actual meaning of the term “anti-conquest,” and/or the discursive implications of this case of the Hawaiian placenames. In any case, I do think it a very interesting article, and I plan to hold onto it for if I ever teach a historiography seminar.

I’ve tried to touch upon the key points here, but if you’re interested, please do go and take a look at the whole article. This summary here is only sort of a rough stab at just some of Herman’s points.

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Looking into who Mary Louise Pratt (author of Imperial Eyes) is, I came upon a paper she wrote as her “Silver Dialogue” (apparently the great honor of “Silver Professor,” given out by NYU, comes with the obligation to write a single paper to be identified as your “Silver Dialogue“). Largely separate from the subject of post-colonial discourse, and addressing more pressing practical concerns, in this essay, Pratt calls for “a new public idea about language.” In summary, she suggests that US attitudes about multilingualism are terribly misguided, and present serious problems for our country. She calls the US el cementerio de lenguas, “the cemetery of languages,” the place where languages go to die, and goes through a short list of key, prime American “myths” about multilingualism that have helped make America the place it is today – where, even though the vast majority of us have grandparents whose first language was not English, the vast majority of us today do not speak that other language with any degree of fluency. A place where it took something like 9/11 to shock us into realizing (and even then, only some of us) how woefully disconnected we are from understanding our geopolitical place in the world, and lacking the linguistic skills to (paraphrasing slightly) “prevent or anticipate crises and respond adequately when they came” (p2). She then goes on to attack the notion that security concerns are the chief application of, or need for, multilingualism, pointing to broader cultural and societal benefits.

As I made my way through this document, I came to feel that the problem of our language attitudes, and hence language abilities, is far more serious than I might have thought, and more to the point, that the necessary changes are really quite radical and extensive. We need to make a pretty profound change, and it’ll take a lot to make that happen, but if it can somehow be made to come about, wow, what an incredible change for the better it will be.

To summarize, let me quote Pratt’s own summary of her statements:

1. All things being equal, bilingual families usually prefer to stay bilingual. Immigrant families do not simply want to lose their home languages, and they *do* (emphasis added) want to learn English.
2. Americans are not hostile to multilingualism; they are ambivalent, both proud of their multilingual history and committed to English as the lingua franca. …
3. It’s never too early and never too late to learn a language. Second-language learning does not have to begin in early childhood.
4. National security concerns define our language needs too narrowly. We need knowledge and interaction of all kinds. …
5. Monolingualism is a handicap. [We need to make this a widespread attitude.]
6. Local heritage communities must be engaged by our language programs. [Why do we not draw more extensively on native/heritage speakers for our multifarious language needs?]
7. Advanced competence [must become] a key educational goal.
8. We need linguistic pipelines at every level [i.e. a greater focus on the importance of language ability, and guiding students into, and through, effective language programs, beginning in high school or earlier]

This article is a quick and interesting read, though, so I do recommend reading the whole thing and not just taking my summary as the SparkNotes version.

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Update: Honolulu Rail Project

Today, Archaeology.org’s daily news roundup has an update for us on the Honolulu Rail Project, and the archaeological opposition to the project, which I posted about some time ago.

The Hawaii State Supreme Court has decided in favor of Paulette Kaleikini, who accused the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) of not doing due diligence in performing archaeological surveys along the entire route of the proposed rail line before beginning construction. Kaleikini, whose credentials remain entirely unclear to me, claims to have ancestors buried in Kaka’ako, a major site of ancient Hawaiian burials through which the rail line is proposed to run.

The politics are complicated, but, in short, construction is now stopped, and will be delayed by at least five to seven months; the Hawaii Reporter (which, incidentally, I had never heard of before) says that if any burials are found, and I am sure there will be, the project might be delayed by as much as 18 months. All of this is costing the taxpayers even more money, which I’m sure doesn’t make people happy – especially when so many people were opposed to the project originally on the basis of the vast cost to taxpayers. On the other hand, there seems some disagreement as to whether or not the project could be scrapped entirely, or whether it will push forward no matter what. I wonder how much pressure it would take to get them to scrap this route and do a completely different route, servicing a different part of the island.

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London’s Old Jewry

When I was in London, I came across a lot of amusing or interesting placenames. Thinking it funny that this says “Old Jewry,” and very clearly not “Old Jewelery” (or “jewelry”), and that it’s right around the corner from a street named “Poultry” (not Poultry St, or Poultry Ave, but just Poultry), I took a photo of it. And forgot about it.

Then I came across the photo again, today, and decided to look into it a little. Not much, I must admit; I haven’t exactly done my research here, and for that I apologize. But, according to Wikipedia (woo… boo… whatever), this was in fact the center of the medieval Jewish ghetto in London. I knew that the Jews were expelled from England at some point (turns out it was 1290, under Edward I), and not formally allowed, let alone invited, to return until centuries later (1657, apparently, under Cromwell). But I guess I never gave too much thought, or just never knew, when it was that Jews came to settle in England in the first place, or to what extent.

Wikipedia tells us that there are no solid records of a Jewish presence prior to the Norman Conquest, though many scholars believe it likely that Jews may have entered England with the Romans. Following his Conquest of England, William of Normandy apparently invited Jews to come and settle in England, and went further, granting them freedom to move about the country, to buy and own and sell property, to swear oaths on a Hebrew Bible rather than a Christian one, and certain other freedoms and powers.

It would seem that a so-called “ghetto” in the area around Old Jewry was the chief Jewish neighborhood in London in early medieval times. Other streets / place-names in the area bear similar Jewish-related nomenclatures. It is believed that a burial ground on/near the nearby Jewen Street was the only one the Jewish community was permitted to maintain as a Jewish burial ground; ironically, a few Christian churches in the area take their names from the streets, and thus come to have names like St Lawrence Jewry.

Though I may focus on Japanese history most of the time, I of course cannot help but be curious about, and intrigued by, the histories of my own people. An exhibition at the Center for Jewish History here in New York, on the history of Jews in New York City, was also quite interesting. The small exhibition began with some incredible artifacts from colonial & Revolutionary-era New York, including a printed & handwritten bill for the costs of construction of a Jewish synagogue, Shearith Israel. The Spanish/Portuguese Shearith Israel still operates today. The exhibition leads briefly through the 19th and 20th centuries, and ends with a series of videos in which different members of the community answer the question “what makes a New York Jew?”

We very rarely hear about Jews in mainstream history classes (and not without good reason – you can’t cover each and every minority in every period of history in every part of the world), and it is easy to grow up thinking that maybe there weren’t any Jews at all in medieval England, or Revolutionary-era New York, but there were. And in countless other times and places besides, each with their own sometimes quite fascinating stories.

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Archaeological Obstacles for Honolulu Rail Project

Living in Honolulu the last few years, I’ve heard bits and snatches of talk about a proposed (and apparently already underway, though widely opposed) rail line connecting Kapolei, Waipahu, and Pearl City (to the west and north of Pearl Harbor) with downtown Honolulu to the east.

Today, Archaeology.org’s daily archaeology news roundup links to a KITV (Honolulu local news) video report about a new obstacle to the project. A Native Hawaiian woman by the name of Paulette Kaleikini has brought a lawsuit claiming that the full route needs to be archaeologically surveyed before construction continues, since there may be Hawaiian burial sites along the route. It is unclear from the article & video report what, if any, connection Ms. Kaleikini has to larger Native Hawaiian advocacy groups, or on what grounds she claims to be either a spokesperson for the Native Hawaiian community, or an archaeology/heritage expert.¹ But, since the honored remains (known as ʻiwi in the Hawaiian language) of Native Hawaiian ancestors are scattered throughout the island, and very very frequently found when attempting a construction project, it does seem, on the surface, that there is indeed a high likelihood that the route will run across sacred burial sites.

Part of what makes this difficult is the fact that, unlike many other cultures, Native Hawaiians traditionally did not concentrate their burials in a single location (i.e. a cemetery), nor mark burials in any way. To the contrary, burials, especially of people of high birth or great power, known as aliʻi, were deliberately hidden and kept secret, so that no one could steal the ʻiwi (the bones) and in doing so steal the person’s mana – their power. When I first arrived in Hawaii, I thought the whole thing more than a little absurd; firstly, if you didn’t even know it was there, how can it be a sacred site? And secondly, if you value all the land (ʻaina) in the islands as sacred, then how is anything supposed to be built, ever? I have since learned to appreciate the Native Hawaiian culture, heritage, and beliefs a lot more, and feel bad for my prior attitudes. Still, these questions remain. Native Hawaiians enjoy the benefits of “modern” life just as much as the next person, and so they too must negotiate (and I am sure they do) for themselves where they stand in terms of there being a balance between protecting the ʻaina and allowing roads, buildings, and perhaps railroads to be built.

Now, in theory, as in any other archaeologically rich part of the world, the railroad route could simply be altered to go around any burial sites or other archaeologically significant sites that may be uncovered. The question is whether the planners will actually do that, whether they will choose to invest the time and money to do what has to be done to respect these sites, or whether they will (pardon the pun) rairoad right over Native objections, as has happened so many times in the past. Since this is a State Supreme Court case we are discussing, of course, there is also the technical legal matter of whether or not it is legal to do the archaeological survey in phases (as is being done, and as federal law allows) or whether it must be done along the entire route first, before construction can continue (as Kaleikini alleges is mandated by state law).

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It remains to be seen whether the railroad project will go forward without a full archaeological survey being completed first. But, in the meantime, I think there is a lot of need for it, and at the same time a lot of very appropriate and correct-minded opposition.

Earlier this week, Honolulu was announced to have the worst traffic congestion in the US. Congratulations! It was obvious to me almost from the moment I stepped off the airplane three years ago that Oahu residents love their cars, and love driving, and that despite (a) it being a small, relatively compact town with the perfect climate for walking, biking, or skateboarding, (b) everyone’s desire to preserve and protect the beautiful natural environment, and (c) the terrible congestion on the freeway, in Waikiki, and elsewhere, there is little impetus to change. It is in fact an extremely unfriendly city for bicyclists, chiefly in terms of drivers’ complete disregard for bicyclists in terms of sharing the road, in terms of looking out for bicycles and not hitting them, and in terms of just generally being good drivers and acting in a predictable manner. I know numerous people who have gotten hit on their bicycle or moped and either seriously injured or killed.

So, yes. We absolutely need a railroad. However, while I do believe that there must be plenty of people who are simply bullheaded about their car-centered culture and who would oppose any improvement or expansion of public transportation², the opposition we hear the most about focuses instead on the incredible monetary cost of the project, and on the allegation that the technology and design were already on the verge of being outdated before construction even began – by the time it’s complete, the whole thing will be even more outdated. If you’re interested in seeing more specifically what reasons people are giving for their opposition, I invite you to Google it.

Meanwhile, while I do support the expansion of public transportation – specifically of the railroad variety – on Oahu, I think it positively asinine to build it where they are planning right now. The proposed line runs from Kapolei to Ala Moana, in downtown Honolulu. It does not connect to the University, to Kaimuki or Hawaii Kai, or any other areas I have ever been, or needed to get to, or where anyone I know lives. Kapolei, I am told, is a relatively wealthy neighborhood, full of the kinds of people who have the kind of influence to bring a railroad out to their neck of the woods first, rather than to anyone else’s.³ These are, of course, the same kind of people who can afford the nicest cars and (for some reason, somehow) would never “stoop” to riding public transportation.

Personally, I say screw Kapolei. They can drive in. Or they can move somewhere more normal. Meanwhile, it’s the people all the way on the other side of the island, in Kailua and Kaneohe, who could really use a train, so that they don’t have to deal with the traffic on the Pali Highway, and with having to drive all the way across the island, each way, every day. And so that people like me, who don’t have cars, don’t have to deal with the ridiculously long bus ride to get out there, to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. A train over to Kailua/Kaneohe, connecting to the University (hard to bike to because it’s up in the mountains), Kaimuki, and Waikiki (hard to get to because there’s only two bridges over the canal), would be wonderful.

Finally, since so much of the opposition centers on the cost of the project, I don’t really understand why they’re building an elevated rail line. Yes, admittedly, ground-level train lines would cut up the road network, making it harder to walk, bike, or drive anywhere without having to go out of your way to get to a crossing. But, we have that problem with the freeway already anyway, and I don’t see anyone complaining that we should get rid of the goddamned freeway. Ground-level rails would do less damage to the skyline, would avoid the problem of putting areas into shadow (under the tracks), and would cost a lot less. Hawaii has had railroads before…

Whatever happens, I hope that a positive resolution is reached. If they do go ahead and build the railroad, I hope that they do so while properly respecting Native Hawaiian burial sites, and that the railroad ends up seeing strong ridership, and a significant easing of congestion on the roads. If it does well enough, they might even expand it out to some more actually useful places. Frankly, I’m pessimistic about either of these things happening, but we shall see.

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(1) Interestingly, Kaleikini seems to have also been one of the primary people opposing the construction of the Wal-Mart on Keeaumoku St in downtown Honolulu some years ago. This was a fairly major issue at the time, and remains a prominent oft-discussed example today.
(2) People often talk about Honolulu’s creatively named “TheBus” being already the best public transportation system in the country; therefore, they argue, what do we need a railroad for? However, being named “America’s Best Transit System” in 1994 and 2000 doesn’t make it true today; furthermore, trains, especially elevated trains, don’t get stuck in traffic the way buses do. I cannot count the number of times TheBus was late, or didn’t show up at all. Note also that whatever issues the NYC subway system may have, it runs 24/7 and compared to the incredible infrequency of Honolulu buses along most routes, that has got to count for something. I’ll take the subway over a bus any day. And, if in a bike-friendly city like Kyoto, I’ll take my bike over public transportation.
(3) Reminds me of Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei who arranged for the Shinkansen (bullet train) to go out to his home region of Niigata when there was (and remains) much more demand for it to go elsewhere first. Even today, certain major cities like Kanazawa still don’t have a Shinkansen station.

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Reconstruction of the Failed Tohoku Sea Barriers

The New York Times reports today on efforts to rebuild or repair the seawalls and breakwaters in northern Japan which failed to defend the coastal towns and villages of that region from the March 11 tsunami, and which in fact, the article explains, amplified the size and effect of the tsunami for neighboring towns and villages.

As the Times explains, “[The breakwater's] performance that day, coupled with its past failure to spur the growth of new businesses, suggested that the breakwater would be written off as yet another of the white elephant construction projects littering rural Japan. But Tokyo quickly and quietly decided to rebuild it as part of the reconstruction of the tsunami-ravaged zone, at a cost of at least $650 million.” And that, if I’m reading it right, is referring specifically only to the breakwater off the coast of the town of Kamaishi, just one of a great many towns with seawalls or breakwaters which proved rather ineffective on March 11, and which are being rebuilt anyway.

There’s a lot that could be said here, and if I were in any way expert or even well-read or knowledgeable on subjects relating to the structure of Japan’s current contemporary political/industrial complex, I suppose I might have quite a lot to say. But, as my knowledge of the subject comes solely from reading books by Alex Kerr, especially “Dogs and Demons,” from news articles such as this one, and from a keynote talk given a couple weeks ago at a UCLA symposium by Prof. Brett Walker of the University of Montana, I’ll try to restrain myself from delving into subjects where I really have no idea what I’m talking about.

The Times’ assertion that “as details of the government’s reconstruction spending emerge, signs are growing that Japan has yet to move beyond a postwar model that enriched the country but ultimately left it stagnant for the past two decades” echoes Alex Kerr’s assertions in “Dogs and Demons.” Kerr argues at length that Japan’s [to the extent that we can or should talk about all of Japan having one perspective, one attitude] conception of ‘modernity’ is, ironically, terribly far behind, despite its image in the world as being quite cutting-edge. And I think this is evident by simply walking around in any Japanese city or town. Yes, they are at the cutting-edge in a great many ways – robots, electronics, cellphones – but look at how everything, everything is made of blocky, grey, ugly concrete, as if the 1950s-60s never ended. The industries that were at the core of Japan’s rebuilding in the early postwar should not be the industries that remain at the core of its economy today, and yet they are. Even as Japan builds robots and cellphones, medical technologies, and whatever else, the concrete industry of all goddamn things remains exceptionally powerful politically. Or so Kerr tells us.

And so, as Kerr argues, Japan’s efforts for local or regional economic stimulation and growth remain grounded in concrete-industry-driven projects, construction projects, including laying concrete in the riverbeds of every river in Japan, surrounding the beaches with a variety of types of seawalls and breakwaters which, as we saw, were not effective enough, and building boondoggles, such as giant event centers, concert halls and the like that are meant to bring events, and bring people and money to regional cities, but which in the end actually just sort of sit there looking pretty (or hideous, as the case may be) because there’s not enough actual demand to hold events all the way out there. Other boondoggles take the form of artificially created tourist attractions, built under the pretense that building, say, a massive set of highway cloverleafs that roughly resembles the shape of a dragon will actually be enough of a draw to bring tourism to that part of the country.

Is it a sort of blindness, a sort of stupidity, among bureaucrats, who just can’t seem to break out of an old-school, outdated view of how modernity works? It’s quite tempting to want to see it that way… and, in a way, I’d rather believe that than believe that the Japanese government bureaucracy is totally rife with corruption, that is, with being totally tied up in corporate interests, particularly with the concrete & construction industries.

But, I’m getting away from the subject of the rebuilding in Tohoku.

The Times article touches upon another important point, which is that much of Japan’s more rural areas have been rapidly aging and depopulating, as young people move in greater and greater numbers to the cities, abandoning the rural villages and towns. So, the obvious question: should we (they) even bother rebuilding these destroyed coastal villages, if they were in such decline to begin with? So many villages and towns in other parts of the country have become entirely emptied, as the entire population has either moved to bigger cities, or has died out, as the economy continues to shift away from agriculture and more traditional ways of life. Are there enough people to rebuild Kamaishi, or these other coastal towns, for? Are there enough people to actually allow the town to rebound, assuming it does get rebuilt and re-settled and all that? Some argue, according to the NYT, that “Japan’s dwindling resources would be better spent merging destroyed communities into inland “compact towns” offering centralized services.”

All of this relates as well to ideas discussed by Prof. Brett Walker of Montana State University, in a keynote given at a grad student symposium at UCLA a few weeks ago, and in a video interview recorded just days after the disaster. Dr. Walker has written on environmental history of the Edo period, including especially work on the extinction of the Japanese wolf; his newest book, “Toxic Archipelago,” addresses more modern concerns, namely industrial pollution. But, in any case, in this video interview, and also in his keynote at UCLA a few weeks ago, he talks about – among other related phenomena – the extreme extent to which Japan’s landscape is artificially engineered. The landscape is manmade, with seawalls and breakwaters, with concrete riverbeds and dams, a product of an attitude, Walker argues, that science and technology can engineer us out of any problem we may face. Now, there may be those who argue that we simply need *better* breakwaters, better seawalls, and I can certainly see the logic and the appeal of that argument. However, I’m inclined to side with Prof. Walker, who says that at some point, perhaps, we need to step back, and instead of working to fight against nature, perhaps we need to work harder to work with nature, whatever that means. I’m not sure exactly how that plays out, to be honest, but at the very least, the argument can be made for abandoning the dangerous coastlines, and moving inland, beyond those centuries-old stone markers – especially at a time when rural Japan is so depopulated, and so the population density doesn’t actually demand pushing out to the edges of inhabitable land. More to the point, perhaps, I think we need to think more seriously about the impacts of breakwaters and seawalls, not only culturally and in terms of the aesthetics of the shoreline (two considerations which I actually place great importance on), but also in terms of the very serious impacts these devices have upon erosion, and upon the amplification of tsunami as they affect neighboring areas. They say that even as the breakwaters at Kamaishi failed to protect the town of Kamaishi, they still functioned to double the height of the waves for the neighboring village of Ryoishi. Any environmental science textbook will tell you that artificial sandbars built to protect a stretch of beach from erosion only serves to dramatically increase erosion around other sections, on the opposite site from the protected beach.

So, anyway, enough of my talk. Read the New York Times article yourself, check out Brett Walker’s video, and come to your own conclusions.

I don’t think there’s any clear single solution to what Japan should be doing in terms of the rebuilding, but I do think that there are definitely things they should not be doing… I hope that the bureaucrats can, in the end, do what needs to be done, what’s best for the towns and villages and people of Tohoku, rather than what is best for themselves, and for their corporate interests.

My thanks to Kathryn of http://japaneseliterature.wordpress.com/ for bringing this NYT article to my attention.

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Dissecting and Retrofitting Suburbia

The problem of suburbia, sprawl, and car culture in our country is a contentious and subjective one. Some people think it’s not a problem. Some people, like myself, think it’s a major problem, but are not quite sure what the solution is.

I could write a rambling rant many paragraphs long on this, but instead, here are two talks from scholars who have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about and researching these issues, and who explain the issues, and possible solutions, far more eloquently than I ever could.

In short: walkable downtowns organized around pedestrians, good. Vast expanses of underperforming asphalt, big box stores, and strip malls that are depressing, or at best uninspiring to look at, accessible only by car, and not by foot, bad.

On a related note, Transportation For America’s campaign “Dangerous by Design 2011″ seeks to address and make more visible the extremely dangerous nature of the way our streets and cities are organized – organized around maximum efficiency for an automobile-centered lifestyle, and not around safety for pedestrians (let alone pleasantness of the urban environment and lifestyle outside of the car).

I look forward to finding more articles, videos, and talks on the subject, becoming more informed and more eloquent on the subject, and more to the point, I look forward to seeing some actual change begin to take place.

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Quick Links Sept 2011

Through RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, email, we’re exposed to more about our world everyday than ever before. Not just the stuff the local paper feels worthy of printing, but news on a whole myriad of topics, curated by ourselves to match our interests. And, so, every now and then, I find myself with more tabs open, more things I want to share, than I really have time or energy to devote full posts to. So, it’s time for another Quick Links.

*Science Daily reports on a new way to date silk. Rather than using carbon dating techniques, which apparently require the destruction of more material than we are usually willing to spare from, for example, a priceless ancient Chinese ink painting, the new technique dates silks based on the deterioration rate of the amino acids, or proteins, which form the silk. Scientists used the technique on a number of already-dated objects ranging from a Warring States period (475-221 B.C.) Chinese textile to a 19th century Mexican War flag, to establish baselines for the rate of deterioration, against which newly tested objects can be compared.

*Japanese fashion/textile artist Izukura Akihiko will be enjoying a show at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and simultaneously at the Linekona Art Center downtown, in January-Feburary 2012. I’ll admit, I’d never heard of him before, was not at all familiar with his work. But, local Hawaii-based fashion critic Paula Rath has put together a beautiful blog post giving us a glimpse at what we can look forward to.

*The Asahi Shinbun reports that the 1570 Battle of Anegawa fought between a combined Oda-Tokugawa army and the allied Asai and Asakura clans, may have been much smaller in scope than previously believed. The battle features several giants of Japanese history – namely Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu – or, at least, their troops (I’m not clear on whether Ieyasu and Nobunaga were there in person; such fine details of Sengoku battles are not among my strong points), and has been, like most major battles, romanticized and fictionalized and retold numerous times over. Some sources give army size numbers in the 15-20,000 range. Whether this is realistic, I don’t know. But, at some point soon I hope to actually read the article, and see what it has to say.

*The Honolulu Academy of Arts has just announced on its Facebook page that from now on the museum will be allowing photography! This is a wonderful turn of events. Now I can go and record the images that I find most beautiful or interesting, and be able to come back to them again, to remind myself what I saw, remind myself which artists to look into… Take photos of gallery labels and save myself the time copying them down by hand in the gallery.

The museum does specify, however, that “No photographs or videotapes may be reproduced, distributed, or sold without written permission from the museum,” which seems a pretty standard disclaimer. Except that I remain unclear as to whether a blog such as this one – or uploading photos to Flickr – counts as “personal use” or “fair use” in some other way, e.g. “educational use”, or whether, on the contrary, it counts as “reproduction and distribution” and is thus not allowed. Having photos for my own study and such will be wonderful, and I look forward to being able to take some photos for that purpose. However, being able to freely share those photos in a context such as a blog, or on Flickr, without worrying whether it counts as fair use, that’s the next important step.

*UK newspaper The Independent reports on analysis of skeletons of people who committed suicide after the 1333 siege of Kamakura. Thanks to further discussion of this article on the Samurai-Archives forums, I am reminded and able to put it together that this is talking about the Hôjô clan “harakiri yagura” or “suicide cave” which I’ve actually seen, in Kamakura. Check out the article, and the discussion thread on the Samurai-Archives forums for more.

*The building housing Japan Society, built by Junzo Yoshimura in 1971, the first building in NYC to be designed by a Japanese architect, has just been officially named a “landmark” by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

I love that the article acknowledges that some might call it a “modernist box.” This is more or less the same terminology I use to criticize countless buildings I see, the style of which I just have no interest in whatsoever. But the appealing thing about the Japan Society building is that it’s not purely that; it’s not purely a modernist box, but it’s a modernist box with enough touches of hints of traditional Japanese architecture that it’s actually interesting and (somewhat) attractive, and not simply just another of more of the same. Personally, I would prefer to see more buildings that much more closely resemble truly traditional-style machiya, rather than just recalling it in an otherwise very modernist form. But, unattractive though it may be, at least on a conceptual level, the Japan Society building, as it is, represents the fusion of traditional and ultra-modern that is contemporary Japan.

*I’ve just come across an old blog post from a blog called Edwardian Promenade, discussing the modern history of women’s dress in Meiji Japan, more specifically, the adoption of yôfuku (Western garments – dresses, corsets, bustles, hats etc.) and the transformation of the furisode, kosode, and various other kinds of traditional Japanese garments into “the kimono”, a newly defined “national costume” for a newly defined Nation.

The post is wonderfully detailed, including lots of dates and such, and describing ways in which the kimono, or the way it is worn, changed in this period. I bet you didn’t even know the kimono changed at all – it’s so traditional, after all, right? Unchanged? Hardly. Like so many things held up as symbols of “traditional Japan” today, the kimono, like tea ceremony, underwent dramatic changes in the Meiji period. Evangeline, the author of the blog, goes into great detail about the way the kimono, and Western Victorian fashions, created different silhouettes, and their relationship to ideas of ideal beauty.

*Finally, there’s apparently an ongoing controversy about the relocation of a writing hut where Roald Dahl did a lot of his writing. The hut, in the garden of his home in Buckinghamshire, is in desperate need of repair, or it might not last another year. There is a plan, therefore, to move its contents – pens, pictures, balls of yarn, his La-Z-Boy, all kinds of things, to the Roald Dahl Museum. However, the museum claims that it will cost £500,000 to move, and more importantly, conserve, all of these objects. I think, if I’m not misunderstanding, the £500,000 also includes the costs of designing and building new museum displays to construct an exhibition around the objects.

Yet, there is apparently some public outrage over the idea that the museum, and Dahl’s family, should be asking for help raising the £500,000 when many allege that Dahl’s widow could (and should) just pay for it entirely herself, out of pocket, from the vast riches she earns off royalties and book sales and such.

…

Well, that’s it for now (phew!). Sometimes those links just really add up. I look forward to your thoughts, comments, and feedback. Sayonara for now!

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10 Years Ago Today

I was in Japanese class when it happened. It’s funny how memories play tricks on you – for years afterwards, I thought I remembered it as if I were in my second or third year of Japanese, as if I was quite used to being there, knowing the professor, a very familiar place, and a place that of course I was there. But, in actuality, as I realized relatively recently thinking back on it, it was sophomore year, and I could not have been more than 2-3 weeks into my first semester of ever taking Japanese.

I was in Japanese class when it happened. And so, leaving class around 10am, right after the first tower collapsed (the first one to collapse; the second one to be struck), I passed through the Campus Center, and saw tons of people huddled around the television. I asked a friend what was going on, and she said planes had hit the World Trade Center. For a moment, I didn’t, couldn’t, understand. It sounded like something out of a TV show or a movie – for a moment, I thought that’s exactly what they were talking about, something fictional.

There were too many people there, and I couldn’t see or hear the TV at all, so I rushed back to my dorm, to see if I could watch the news about it streaming on my computer, or if I could otherwise read about the news as it happened. .. I don’t really remember, I guess maybe I must have been locked out, must have forgotten my keys inside the room, because I don’t remember getting into my room, or sitting at my computer, or reading/watching about it at that time. I do remember sitting in the hallway just outside my room, and crying.

I surely must have tried to call home, and it was when I couldn’t get through that I started thinking the worst horror scenarios, that my father, a schoolteacher in the Bronx (or was it Brooklyn or Queens at that time, 10 yrs ago?), might, just maybe, for whatever reason, have been in the Towers, even though he hardly ever has any reason whatsoever to be there. But, I couldn’t get through to anyone, because the telephone lines were all jammed. Yet here’s where memory tricks you again – today, I’m so used to having a cellphone, of course I must have had a cellphone, but no, I got my first cellphone in 2003, in Japan. I could go on a whole post about how much has changed in the last ten years – back then, I had no cellphone, no laptop; there was no Twitter, no Facebook, and how differently it might have all unfolded if we had these things, how differently other events, such as the 3/11 earthquake/tsunami this year did unfold because we do have these things, and just more generally how much life has changed even though in some respects it feels like it hasn’t, and in some respects it feels like just yesterday that it was 2001. But, I won’t go on and on about that. Moving on…

I don’t remember much else about that day, about 9/11. I remember being terribly upset thinking the absolute worst, what if what if, that million in one chance that, for whatever reason, my father was down there, and he was killed. For whatever reason, I had no doubt that everyone else was fine. … And, of course, like everyone else, I thought about sci-fi movies and Tom Clancy films; I thought about how surreal this all was, and how it changed everything.

I remember my friend Dana, in particular, being there to console me. It was a hard day to be an American, it was a particularly hard day to be a New Yorker in Boston, and I don’t know that I have ever felt closer to the city than that day. I grew up out in the suburbs, and at that time in my life knew the City less well than I do today; I had never yet worked in the City, never yet spent countless times walking around on my own or with friends, visiting restaurants and cafés and shops and museums… But on that day, I felt like a New Yorker. And it hurt not to know, and it hurt not to be there, and part of me still feels I wish I had been in New York when this happened. Obviously, I don’t wish that I were anywhere near Ground Zero, but I wish I had experienced this whole thing, and the following days and weeks, as a New Yorker, and not in the relative isolation of a suburban college campus outside of Boston.

I eventually got in touch with my family again, and everything was fine. So far as I know or remember, no one I knew was killed on that day. It was not until many years later that we would learn that my uncle, a City Hall reporter, whose office is literally no more than two or three blocks from the World Trade Center, tried to get out of City Hall and down to the “action,” to be there in the midst of it, to report. Well, I guess I feel bad for him that he had to miss out on such an experience, such an opportunity, but I am glad that they would not let him leave the building. And besides, I am sure there was plenty of reporting to be done within City Hall, as to how Mayor Giuliani and his staff and everyone responded.

On a side note, as it doesn’t feel that long ago, it feels weird to me to think about us having a different mayor, and a different president, at the time. Those things really make it feel like a different place and a different time, more so than anything else could. I spent a bit of time yesterday watching old footage, the original live footage of “breaking news” reporters reporting on the events of 9/11 as they happened, and for me it was really that element – that element of there being a different president, a different mayor – that made it feel like such a completely different time. That, and the fact that at that time, in those moments, as it was happening, we didn’t know what was going on, or what the ramifications were. It is easy to forget, with everything we know now, that at 9am on 9/11, at that moment, we didn’t know for sure if it was a plane, we didn’t know for sure if it was an act of terrorism; at that moment, Al Qaeda was not yet a household term, and we had no idea what else was coming, if there would be more attacks…

A few weeks later, I was on my way home for Yom Kippur. It seems reversed, that normally I would go home for Rosh Hashanah – the slightly lengthier holiday, and the one that involves a big family dinner – but somehow I remember it being Yom Kippur, and it being a few weeks later, not a mere 7 days later. I took Amtrak home, and the train was nearly empty, probably in large part due to the excessive cost of taking Amtrak. Even today, I do not understand for what godawful reason it should cost upwards of $200 to travel between Boston & NY or NY & DC via Amtrak when it only costs $20 on the bus, or somewhere around $75-100 for a shuttle flight. Some of the only other people in the train car with me were a group of Irish kids, roughly college age like myself, who were on their first trip to the US. They had spent some time in Boston, and were now visiting NYC for the first time. As the train approached the city and we got our first glimpse of the skyline, the giant plume of smoke, still smoking two weeks later, was quite perfectly visible. It was an image which would remain etched on my mind for years to come, though now it is pretty much faded, and replaced by false memories informed by media photos. At this point, who knows what I saw? Memory tricks us. But, I do remember thinking, and wondering, what it must have been like for these guys from Ireland, to have this be their first visit to the US, at this time…

We misremember air travel as having been shut down for weeks, but Wikipedia informs me that it resumed as of September 13. I remember being home, and hearing and seeing a commercial jet fly overhead, as they always have done over our home, and I remember it being scary for a moment, genuinely eerie to see and hear planes in the sky again. Could it have really been only two days?

I have only vague memories of the feeling we had in the days and weeks after 9/11, the feeling of coming together as a nation. Alas, if only that feeling could have lasted. Our country is so fractured today, so split. It is a completely different place from what it was ten years ago. We may not be less safe or less free; I won’t comment on that. But we are definitely less united, less well regarded at home and abroad, less strong economically, and less stable. I worry about us, I worry about where we are going and what is going to happen…

Right: A rendering of what the new World Trade Center will look like when it is completed.

But, I am glad to hear that things have finally gotten off the ground at the World Trade Center site. After years of bureaucratic bullshit, the Towers, and Memorial, and Museum, and whatever else, which we should have built by 2003 or so, in a show of strength, are now finally, finally, being completed. I have not been to the site in many years. I am eager to visit it and see our new Freedom Tower, standing tall and strong and beautiful, a symbol of renewal and rebirth, of the strength of the US and of NYC, to endure and to bounce back. Even as the rest of the country crumbles around us, in infantile, ignorant, bull-headed political horseshit, NYC stands tall, and continues to be one of the most vibrant, exciting, and cosmopolitan cities on the planet.

All images from Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons, and used under the according free or copyleft licenses.

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